Report to Greeco

Author: Nikos Kazantzakis Translation: Mamdouh Adwan Number of pages: 637 pages Publisher: Mamdouh Adwan Publishing House Report to Griko This is not an autobiography, for my personal life has some value, and relatively speaking, only for me and not for anyone else. The only value I know in it was in the efforts to ascend from one degree to another to reach the highest point that her strength and stubbornness can bring her to, the summit I casually called "The Cretan Outlook." Therefore, you, the reader, will find in these pages the red mark left by drops of my blood, the mark that indicates my journey among people, emotions, and ideas. Every human being, deserving to claim to be the son of man, must carry his cross and climb his calvary. Many, in fact most, reach the first or second degree. Then they collapse panting in the middle of the journey, and do not reach the peak of the calvary, in other words, the peak of their duty: to be crucified, to be resurrected, and to save their souls. Their hearts weaken out of fear of crucifixion, and they do not realize that the cross is the only way to resurrection, and there is no other way. There were four decisive degrees in my ascent. Each bearing a sacred name: Christ, Buddha, Lenin, Ulysses. My bloody journey among these great spirits and other spirits is what I will try hard to clarify in these "diaries," after the sun has almost set — it is a journey of a human carrying his heart in his mouth as he climbs his rugged and harsh mountain of destiny. All my spirits are a cry. All my deeds are a stumble on this cry. Throughout my life, there was a word that tormented me and renewed me, and that was the word "ascension." I will present this ascent. I blend here reality with imagination, with the traces of the red footprints left by my narrator as I ascend. I am eager to finish quickly before I put on my "black helmet" and return to tradition. Because this bloody mark is the only sign that will remain of my crossing into the land. Everything I wrote or did was written or achieved on water, and has vanished.